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The Impact of Low Salaries At Apple
orenh writes "Recent data indicate that Apple engineers have significantly lower salaries than their Silicon Valley peers: $89,000 at Apple, versus $105,000 at Yahoo and $112,000 at Google. Paying lower salaries had a major impact on Apple's bottom line when it was struggling in the market up until 2004. But now that Apple is highly profitable, these lower salaries are no longer a factor in Apple's success. Will Apple have to raise salaries to match the market rate, or face defections?"
Now, I know Google is supposed to be an absolute delight to work for, but there is also a certain "coolness" to working at Apple. Think about it, you get to work at the company that makes some of the coolest electronics and computers out there, wouldn't it be awesome to work there? That will go quite a ways towards bridging the salary gap. In addition, if Apple really started noticing its employees leaving en masse and couldn't find competent people at the salaries they offer, then they would definitely raise salaries to attract top talent. I don't think they are having much of a problem doing that with their current situation. And, if you don't have to arbitrarily raise salaries, why would you as a company do something that would cost you more if it wasn't required?
It really depends how you define "green". Would you rather have iMovie or Windows Movie Maker on your resume? How about MobileMe vs Windows Live Spaces? What about iTunes vs Sonic Stage?
GPL Deconstructed
How about "non-monetary benefits"?
Not everyone will jump at a job that pays more - I suspect for a growing number of people, there are certain non-monetary benefits that are worth way more than dollars. Things like flex time, telecommuting, vacation are often things that people may value more than their equivalent dollar value.
Maybe Apple offers a no-nonsense environment where they can work on their stuff until "it's done right" rather than "we must ship, fix it later" mentality. Maybe they like Apple. Maybe Apple as an employer treats them fairly. Who knows (I don't work for Apple). Or maybe the work environment is such that it's a healthy one, or stimulating, or something people can feel happy about and look forward to going to everyday. Or maybe they're working on a pet project (after all, Apple has hired a number of people from the open-source community, like FreeBSD developers), and they're getting paid for what would otherwise be volunteer work.
Money isn't everything to a job. For some, it's the most important thing, but for others, once they have enough to satisfy their material needs and current wants, excess money just goes to taxes. Sure other jobs can pay more, but they may make demands that are incompatible with how one wishes to spend their time. In fact, I might say if all that keeps one to a job is money, then there's something wrong.
Or, to answer the original quote - maybe the reality distortion field works great.
That's why you don't hear me complaining about salaries.
No the engineers are paid just fine, it's just that Steve Jobs' $1 salary is dragging down the average...
While you're on the topic of benefits, don't forget about the golden handcuffs. Any employee who was around for the bump and has unvested stock options has a compelling reason to stay.
I worked for a company that went through a profit cycle after a long period of doing nothing. I was expecting the company to do something to compensate the engineers who had been patient through the hard times, but then I realized something. They didn't have to. We all had significant stock options, and now that the stock was worth something we would all think twice about leaving (even though there were no raises or bonuses that year).
On the other hand, when the stock price went back down, people were dropping like flies. Eventually Apple will have to make corrections, but they are probably not there yet.
Doesn't do any good to have those things on your resume if you aren't planning to leave Apple. If they want to keep their best people they had better compensate them.
All i'm saying is, unless the salary is horrendously low, you have to look at more than just the pay.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Well, I RTFA and while the data from the TechCrunch posting is quite interesting, the conclusion drawn from the blog post mentioned in the blurb is missing one important factor:
It takes Apples R&D budget and spreads it over the total number of employees from Apple. It then gets to the conclusion that Apple has underpaid its software engineers especially in the last few years as the R&D budget was not nearly as big as it should have been for the number of employees Apple has.
The problem with this conclusion is found in this article, which estimates that half of Apples employees are now working in retail i.e. in an Apple Store. Since Google and the likes do not have a brick and mortar business, so most employees are actually engineers, the simple calculation from the article might work there, but with Apple, it is a bit more complicated than that, especially since the retail store business has just been built in the last couple years
Dont understand me wrong, Apple could still by all means underpay its engineers, but the conclusion of the article is too simple, I think.
People love working for Google, but my friends there tell me they work 70+ hrs/week.
People like working for Yahoo, but my friends there tell me they work 60+ hrs/week.
People tell me they love working for Apple, because they only work 50hrs/week.
Maybe the salaries reflect that? Maybe the salary difference between Yahoo/Apple reflects the relative financial positions of the company? Maybe the salary differences have to do with Cupertino vs Mountain View cost of living? Maybe Apple employees have made buttloads of stock and HR doesn't need to pay them $20k more because they're making $50k each year in restricted stock that's vesting? Maybe Apple gives 30% bonuses and the others don't?
I don't know, you tell me. I know Salary vs Salary is normally a weak comparison.
Nah, they won't.
I live in the area, and let me tell you, people would rather KNOW they are going to have a paycheck, at least in theory because of seniority if nothing else, than NOT because they jumped ship to get a 20K a year raise.
Not when you paid nearly a million dollars for your 3 bedroom house.
There ARE people within a few miles of my house paying 25 thousand dollars a month in RENT.... My neighborhood is in the 2 to 3K a month range, and if I KNEW I could pay my bills with the economy going to the toilet, there is NO good reason for me to jump ship for a raise.
Three years ago, they ALL would have jumped ship. It's a different type of world now, since foreclosures, etc. are looming everywhere. Local trash mags have foreclosure sales listed, as do newspapers.
Apple should pony up some of those profits, but a smart board and CFO would realize, they might need a bit of cheese to get them through the thin period we can all see coming.
--Toll_Free
Deep breaths there skippy, deep breaths.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Actually, package design is a complex and in-demand field, and top package engineers are paid well. When you're making millions of iPod boxes, suddenly questions of balancing manufacturing ease, strength, size, weight (both contributing to transportation costs), materials (supply chain), appearance in the store, etc. become very very important questions.
Yes! Nope. Not only are Apple employees more than likely as fanatical about the product as the loyal Apple consumers (and if you're unkind you can say that they drank the Kool-Aid).
Pride in what you do and a sense of corporate individuality is a huge factor in determinining the loyalty of employees.
Look at Games Workshop as an example. They borderline brainwash staff to love their job, and then they pay them so little that they generally have to share accomodation with fellow staff. And yet the staff turnover is surprisingly low for such a relatively crappy and intensive job.
http://www.zombieapocalypse.tv/
The only people working 70+ hours/week at Google are the folks nearing a deadline, putting out a fire, or dealing with some other emergency. Some other folks do get close to that, however. The fresh out of college, in-a-new-town sort of folks have no life and so they work all week. Google gives them dinner (though I suspect dinner service will be stopping soon; shortly before I left, they were sending out surveys to see how they could "serve you better"), there are showers, and if you're young and energetic you can hook up with another geek. You get a few years before you burn out, so these guys are fine; they'll learn.
The other ones working insane hours are the people that want a pay raise. You have to get promoted to get a raise at Google. And since promotions are essentially popularity contests, you need to Be Seen (and be seen as a go-getter). Since I'm getting up in years, and I have a family life I enjoy, I never bothered to nominate myself for a promotion. It meant a few years without a raise, but the stock did well so it was a wash in my mind. The bonuses were fairly generous anyway.
The final group working long hours are those who are doing a 20% project. These are few and far between, the 20% project being primarily a myth to entice people into applying for a job. (I did a lot of interviewing, and about half the interviewees would ask about 20% projects, what mine was, etc. I could never quite bring myself to lie to them and say that there was ever the slightest chance they'd get to choose and work on a 20% project). There's been a real severe crackdown on 20% time. There's just less need for a "throw everything at a wall, see what sticks" mentality. They have a core set of products, so what you'll see from here on out is acquisitions as a way to get into offering new products/services, and add-ons to existing products (new features in Google maps, etc). There's actually a little room for 20% time in the latter areas, but the barrier to entry is non-trivial. Long gone are the days when you could host some new whizz-bang idea on your workstation or a borrowed machine in a coloc. If you want to integrate with existing services, you have to speak borg, borgmon, etc.
Anyway, there are a lot of people who put in a normal working week at Google an dare perfectly happy. They won't get promoted as often (or ever), and they won't get involved with the internal Google hip-crowd, but they can have happy, productive careers there. It's actually a pretty non-stressful place to work, once the golden handcuffs come off. I don't know that I'd work there again, but it's a fun place to be, with a lot of energy about the place.
As far as Apple, the stuff I was hearing is that there's a lot of fear for one's job, everyone needs to swear allegiance to the Cult of Steve, etc. I gather it's not a very fun place to work, and I gather that long work weeks are all but mandatory. That could just be sour grapes from overworked engineers, though.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
Steve Jobs trots out a half-dozen people, remarks how this person worked on this and that person lead this great team who did that, and generally gives credit to lots of other people, including people who aren't even directly part of Apple. He's done this at EVERY keynote speech pretty much since he's been giving them.
Honestly Steve Jobs hasn't been one to toot his own horn. Sure there isn't a lack of OTHER people doing it but you'd be hard-pressed to find many places where he says that he was the only one who did X, Y, and Z for Apple.
If you want to see some good history about all the old Macintosh crew, go take a look at Folklore.org. There's a lot there about Steve Jobs for sure, but also a lot about all the other people who worked on the first Macintoshes. Steve Jobs is hardly the only one who is recognized for his work at Apple.
Sapere aude!
It's reading things like this that help put my little worldview in perspective. I'm out in the sticks of Eastern Washington (the state), earning ~52k writing software, paying 645 for a two-bed, and maybe a mile from the Columbia River and the mess of parks cluttering the shore.
Outside the Bay it might note known, but there is a running joke about the coming downfall of Google from within due to it's arrogance. Google actually doesn't pay that well and uses a *lot* of 3rd party contractors who make shit on the hope of coming onto google for real.
What's really terrible is Google operates with a quit long interview process, often with a number of people. These people are all very similar and have huge chips on their shoulder and only look to hire people much like themselves. That is people from academia with not too much real market experience. They are quickly becoming a very self referential mono-culture of people who genuinely believe they are better, but without the actual experience to back it up. A telling sign is their over reliance on logic puzzle interviews, raw information queries and needing to gel solidly with a large number of people. They ask very few "how would you do X" or "how do you deal with Y" questions, instead thinking that the raw intelligence is the best feature to grade an applicant on.
Anyone who has dealt with tech "darlings" knows the danger of this. Sure they may be smart as fuck, but it doesn't mean they know how to finish or deliver. It may be hard for the slashdot poster to believe but people used to dream of working at microsoft (and before that IBM) the way they talk about google now. It's just another cycle.
--- I do not moderate.
Having worked at Apple, I can tell you that the conditions where I worked weren't great. In fact, the company that poached me and offered me more money has far better conditions - including personal growth time, further education opportunities (which they pay for), and a real focus on staff health.
At Apple, you're expected to be available from 6.00 am to 9.00 pm or later some times. There is no idea whatsoever of a work-life balance. You get great discounts on hardware, but corporate clients of Apple get an Apple staff discount too - my current employer fits in that category.
I wouldn't go back in a fit - they'd have to offer me a lot more money if they wanted that.
When the other companies in the Valley are hiring again, and Apple continues to have lower salaries, yes they will need to raise them.
$89K/year won't get you a house even with today's market. Maybe an OK condo, assuming a bank will give you a loan. But if you don't mind driving 100+ miles each way, then you could get a decent structure, though the neighborhood might be in the middle of nowhere. Rents are going back up, but if you don't mind living in small apartments to be able to have some play money, then sure, $89K is enough.
For those who just see the numbers and have no idea about cost of living, $700 for an apartment is awesome in the midwest, but $1400-1600 in the Valley will at least keep you out of the bad neighborhoods. After gas, food, and utilities, you'd be lucky to have anything left over to go out and socialize. In the midwest, you'd live like royalty.
I would higher a Apple Engineer...
Now you're just putting them on a pedestal!
I agree, but I think you overestimate this effect. In Apple, with Ive and Jobs generally being the public faces, it's rare for the guys in the trenches to get noticed. Not everybody's ego is pleased with a pat on the back. They need public accolades, more money, or a mix of both.
Also, as sexy as Apple's products are, they don't have a very large lineup. There's no dearth of sexy products in the rest of the tech. world, and people do often move -- we'd probably be surprised at the number of people who have worked for at least 2 companies out of Apple, Google, and MS.
The numbers in TFA (Glassdoor) are based on a sample set that's way too small to be a statistically "representative sample". So we don't even know if Apple engineers really are paid less than the average silicon valley employee.
The one effect the article seems to miss: Apple's stock has been on fire for some time now. So if Apple employees are getting stock awards and have a decent employee stock purchase plan, the raw salary numbers aren't telling us the whole story.
Jobs keeps them there because he ends every employee meeting with "And one more thing...." and makes them wait for the next meeting. ;-)
Um, most people do expect that there will be layoffs and cutbacks when a company is losing money. It's certainly not uncommon. Getting let go with 10 minutes notice is a pretty steep pay cut by any standard.
I'm glad you're not my boss, though. Not only do you seem to be completely clueless about the value of experience and qualifications (no, interns or Indians really can't replace most skilled labor, no matter what your consultants try to sell you for $600/hour), you seem to be downright contemptuous of anyone who isn't sufficiently grateful that they aren't homeless and starving.
Of course, given your words here, I suspect all your qualified people have already quit, so hiring a bunch of Indians probably WOULD be just as good as whomever has such lack of career options as to stick around and take your attitude.
It makes me think of all the ads I see on craigslist where companies want to pay $10/hour for someone to do some technical job, inevitably they get several replies telling them what cheapskates they are and that nobody qualified would apply. The beauty is, they'll get all sorts of unqualified people applying, and then when the project fails, they'll pat themselves on the back for being so smart as not to pay more than $10/hour, because after all, if the cheap ones couldn't do the job, the more expensive ones would have just wasted even more money!
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
"There ARE people within a few miles of my house paying 25 thousand dollars a month in RENT"
Anyone who pays that amount of money just to rent, needs to have their head examined.
Benefits: Working in a genuinely cool atmosphere (I see guys walking around with blue dreadlocked hair, eating at Café Mac (great food, BTW) sitting across from Steve eating his veggies and vegan gourmet cookies, playing volleyball on lunch in the inner lawn of 1 Infinite Loop, etc...
But I think the greatest thing is working with other extraordinarily talented people passionate about Apple. I don't know how else to explain it. I've told this to countless people, but I think the thing that Apple does the best, bar none, is hire the right people. The process is long and arduous (even for the lowest of the low), and they make you feel very special. It's also something you notice after a while, but almost everyone else at Apple kind of behaves the same. Always upbeat, hip, and very passionate. Most have hardcore hobbies (from playing in bands to mountain climbing, almost to a person it seems), and are very goal driven. But, who wouldn't want to hire people like that? The execution at Apple in this regard is just brilliant.
Lastly, and why this has to be explained, and why nearly no one here has mentioned it is quite strange... money is not everything, not even close. Yes, the stock (not options, actual stock placed in an ETrade account, all set up for you to sell at your convenience, although I wouldn't!), 25% off product is nice, the free shit is also nice, and well, working for a great company means a hell of a lot, but the salary isn't at the top of the list of things most of the employees are wanting as far as compensation, it's all the rest, and being able to be who they are (when you saw a suit, you knew they were from out of town) and being pushed to be passionate... it's not that money, at least to the type of people Apple hires... which is my point.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
No, it's *redneck*. Makes a lot more sense.
You, sir, do not know what you are talking about.
Mac OS X is the *first* UNIX(tm) *not* derived from AT&T sources.
I was one of the people who made Mac OS X into UNIX(tm), and we started from not even being able to compile the test suite.
My first one line header file change to xnu to test the water (not defining size_t in ) broke 156 projects, including Open Source that was written by people who assumed promiscuous #include files, in violation of the standard.
A relatively small team of us fixed well over 40,000 total test case failures in a period of about 2.5 years, many of those in command line tools, most of that code being pushed back out to the various Open Source projects. Like, oh, "gcc", "bash", "vim", "tar", "bc", "pax", and hundreds of others, which are now UNIX conformant because of us.
In the middle of things we were working 80 hour weeks, sometimes more.
At the end... *almost no one noticed the changes*, because we worked our *asses* off to make sure there was so close to zero *both binary and source* compatibility issues that it would *not* be noticed. One member of the team put it this way: "It's like raising everyone 12 feet into the air, and replacing the Earth underneath them, then lowering them back down to the ground".
All told, we changed more lines of code in the kernel, libraries, compiler, and UNIX(tm) standardized utilities, than all of the non-conformance related changes in Tiger and Leopard combined. I counted.
And then we published the sources for everything needed to build your own Darwin system that could pass the UNIX(tm) conformance test, including our kernel.
So let me repeat: you, sir, do not know what you are talking about.
-- Terry
No, I meant twenty to twenty five thousand dollars a month.
This is the Bay Area. We have more millionaires than SoCal. Of course, their wealth is all subject to the ups and downs of their stock options, but...
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/723370120.html twenty three thousand a month.
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/nby/apa/723180186.html 10,000 a month for a 3 bedroom
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/apa?minAsk=10000 Lets just make it easy... Theres all of them above 10k. Granted, some of them are for sale prices in the ghettos, but.... Gives you an idea of WHY people out here make what they do.
And one of the reasons I left the rat race of IT after a LONG time.
--Toll_Free
I agree. I recently went from $110K/year with 15% bonus to $95K/year without a bonus for better job security and satisfaction. Company I left has since removed bonus, frozen pay increases, decreased 401K matching, and now fires people w/o severance instead of layoffs. I have a great job with a small company, a great boss that I respect, and work fewer hours.
A couple of adjustments, like paying off a car and riding my motorcycle to work everyday instead of 3 or 4 times a week and I hardly notice. The bills are paid, I still have a growing 401k, and the credit card debt is going down instead of up. Maybe not as fast as it did a year ago, but in the right direction.
I can't speak to the Apple engineers, but I will argue that taking another job purely on salary isn't always the best thing to do. And ratings in magazines rarely add in other perks.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
I work at Apple to and I must disagree with the parent.
They keep me chained to a radiator making iPods in return for a bowl of rice a day. If I forget to check post anonymously the Apple police will hunt me down and kill me for Thinking Different.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I agree about the pay; I was in a job being paid around $20 per hour - the job was pretty easy (non-IT related btw), but the boss was an asshole. Now sure, for the first few months I could do the old thing of "lay back, and think of the queen", but that only works for so longer. The extra pay, no matter how great it may be, will never offset in the long run a crappy work environment. The work environment is where one spends at least 1/3 of their life, all the money in the world isn't going to make the work environment better.
I went from that job to another job (again, non-IT related), I earned less money BUT at the same time, I had alot more perks. I was head of a department in an section of the retail sector which provides stable long term employment. My co-workers were down to earth genuine people rather than egotistical pricks like I've seen in the IT world. Sales representatives giving the ability to get things at wholesale prices (for my own person consumption etc).
Believe me, before I went back to University, I had a pretty sweet time in that job.